Safety and frequency of whole blood donations from elderly donors

摘要

Background Within the coming decades, a steadily growing demand for blood products will face a shrinking blood donor population in many countries. After increasing the donor age of repeat donors for whole blood donation (WB) from 68 to 70years in 2009 in our Blood Service, we investigated whether this is sufficient as a safe and effective strategy to sustain future blood supply. Materials and Methods Between 1 March 2009 and 28 February 2011, WB donations from donors aged between 69 and 70 and their proportion of total donations in 2010 were determined. We analysed adverse reaction rates in donors with respect to sex and age and calculated mean annual donation frequencies. Results Of all invited donors, 32·5% responded and contributed 0·98% (men) and 0·56% (women) to all WB units collected in 2010. The overall and systemic adverse reaction rate per 1·000 WB donations declined by age [men: 1·10 (95%CI: 0·84-1·35) vs. 0 (0-0·8), P<0·0001; 0·99 (0·75-1·23) vs. 0 (0-0·8), P<0·0001 and women: 1·80 (1·46-2·14) vs. 1·12 (0·1-2·66), P<0·0001; 1·47 (1·17-1·78) vs. 1·12 (-0·43-2·66), P=0·0004]. Mean donation frequencies were strongly correlated with increasing age (men: r=0·953, P<0·0001; women: r=0·913, P<0·0001) with peak values for 70-year-old male: 2·53±1·37 vs. 1·79±1·05, P<0·0001 and female donors: 2·15±1·06 vs. 1·52±0·78, P<0·0001. Conclusions Elderly donors have very low adverse reaction frequencies and are highly committed to donate blood. Thus, we consider donations from repeat donors aged 69-70 safe and suggest it a powerful short- to midterm strategy to, at least partially, overcome the challenges of the demographic change.